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Star Cast: Dharmendra, Agastya Nanda, Simar Bhatia, Jaideep Ahlawat, Rahul Dev
Director: Sriram Raghavan
What’s Good: Love and war are both covered masterfully
What’s Bad: The placid pace might not be approved by some, as we are used to fast-paced war narratives
Loo Break: Strictly speaking, no
Watch or Not?: Yes, and not just for good, old Dharam-ji!
Language: Hindi
Available On: Theatrical release
Runtime: 147 Minutes
User Rating:
Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal (Agastya Nanda), an Indian army officer and a Tank commander, has just touched a youthful 21 when he is summoned to war—the Indo-Pak 1971 conflict. The son of Brigadier (Retd.) M.L. Khetarpal (Dharmendra) is a valiant young man who wants to live up to his ancestral tradition (his grandfather and great-grandfather were also soldiers), and his happiness knows no end when, early on, he gets to actually fight the enemy.
His patriotic passion impresses his superiors, and against discretion and the orders to evacuate, he does not give up firing at the enemy, even when his tank is on fire and destroys no less than 10 enemy tanks before laying down his life. In the crucial Battle of Basantar, he thus halts the enemy advance, which plays a vital role in Pakistan’s defeat.
His exemplary supreme sacrifice as he decimates the enemy tanks earned him the Param Vir Chakra, making him the youngest-ever martyr to win the military’s highest recognition.
30 years later, his aging father gets to visit his hometown in Pakistan and soon unravels the story of his braveheart son’s exploits and goes to the very spot where his son breathed his last. And how he comes to know so much about his late son is what the story is about.
Ikkis Movie Review: Script Analysis
The best thing about Ikkis is that nothing vital is fake. Every character and incident is real, though the trajectory of the story that incentivized the making of this film is such that it seems a shade incredible. Happily, the photographs of the actual characters after the climax show that life can indeed be stranger than fiction! A clue for the curious would be a somewhat similar tenor of another true story in Sky Force.
Sriram Raghavan, Arijit Biswas, and Pooja Ladha Surti have penned a watertight and poignant script that seems to lack pace but is actually a relaxed and compassionate look at both father and son. The father’s desire at 81 to visit his hometown in Sargodha (now in Pakistan) makes the story immediately acquire a larger-than-life dimension. His journey is alternated with the son’s professional growth, his romantic interlude with Kiran (Simar Bhatia), his interactions with superiors Risaldar Sagat Singh (Sikandar Kher) and Lt. Col. Hanut Singh (Rahul Dev), apart from colleagues-in-arms and others, and the war sequences.
The dialogues are superb again, especially in the natural banters between the soldiers and the much more moving lines between the brigadier and his Pakistani host, Brigadier Khwaja Mohammed Naseer (Jaideep Ahlawat), who hosts and guides Arun’s father within Pakistan.
At many junctures, we find remarks and sequences that heighten the similarities between Indian and Pakistani people, with sentences alluding to the futility of war and the ill effects of Partition. While these go with the mood, theme, and plotline of the film, we have to watch how the audience will receive this angle, given the current mood of the nation, and one hopes that the honesty and good intention in the storytelling will make for an apt reception, at least in this case.
Ikkis Movie Review: Star Performance
Dharmendra plays Brigadier Khetarpal, and his performance, as always natural and underplayed, is the high point of this moving drama. The use of his real-life poem on longing for his pind (village) and his reaction when he comes face-to-face with the soldier responsible for his son’s death is one more (and tragically the final) proof of his innate talent at every kind of role in his long career that gets a fitting end with this film.
As the Pakistan Army officer, Brigadier Jaan Mohammed Nissar, Jaideep Ahlawat once again delivers a towering performance, and the way he looks compassionately at Brigadier Khetarpal is like a textbook on acting with merely one’s eyes.
Agastya Nanda is excellent in the main role—after all, he was the brightest spot even in his debut release (on OTT)—The Archies, and he is another actor who seems to go the natural, easy way, just like his reel father here. Here’s looking at a bright future for this lad.
Actual debutant Simar Bhatia as Kiran Kochhar shows very strong potential within the very limited time and scope she has, and her body language, voice, and facial expressions belie the fact that this is his debut film. With the right roles and directors, I am sure that she will go a long way. Sikander Kher makes for an effortless Sagat Singh. Rahul Dev as Lieutenant-Colonel Hanut Singh is impressive.
The supporting cast, including Suhasini Mulay as Arun’s mother, Jitendar Singh as Sowar Nand Singh, Shree Bishnoi as Sowar Parag Singh, the driver of Arun’s tank, Vijendar Singh as Nathu Singh, Madhusudan Bishnoi as Sowar Bishwanath Singh, Vivaan Shah as Captain Vijendra, Kailash as Second Lieutenant Brijendra Singh, Aryan Pushkar as Second Lieutenant Avtar, Ekavali Khanna as Nissar’s wife and the actress who plays Nissar’s daughter all do competent work.
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Ikkis Movie Review: Direction, Music
Sriram Raghavan gets outside his Hitchcock-ian thriller mode but thankfully retains his mastery as an intrepid storyteller. I have rarely seen such finesse in the execution of the war sequences in our films, which lack the frenzied narrative patterns of other war sagas in Hindi cinema. Everything looks so believably real that it speaks volumes not just for Raghavan’s penchant for realism and authenticity but also for the research that his team and he must have put into this project.
The emotional sequences also straddle real feelings and not melodrama, and as said before, the climax sequence, where the brigadier is told about how his son paid the ultimate sacrifice (it is said that the family never saw their son again, as his ashes were delivered to them many days later), stands out even among many emotional highs in the narration.
The music is a sore point in a reverse way: the songs by White Noise Collectives are melodious, well-worded, and tuneful; three of them are set within a span of 15 minutes, but their abbreviated use again reflects how Raghavan does not truly give this aspect its due importance. The background score by Sachin-Jigar is outstanding.
Ikkis Movie Review: The Last Word
This is a war film in which passion and emotion dominate in the storytelling, and I would not miss it. And above all, Dharmendra’s last outing may be enough reason to watch this saga, but the film is much more than being merely about his performance and character.
Four stars!
Ikkis Trailer
Ikkis released on 1st January, 2026.
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